About the Role\n\nM-PESA Africa is seeking a Senior Data Architect to design, govern, and evolve our enterprise data landscape across multiple markets. This role operates at the intersection of fintech, payments infrastructure, AI, and analytics. As a senior individual contributor, you will set architectural standards and strategic direction for how data flows and generates value across the M-PESA platforms, influencing engineering, product, and compliance teams.\n\n### Key Responsibilities\n\n#### Data Architecture & Strategy\n- Own the enterprise data architecture across M-PESA Africa's multi-market environment, spanning transactional, operational, analytical, and AI/ML data domains.\n- Define and enforce data modelling standards, data flow patterns, and integration architecture for real-time and batch processing pipelines.\n- Lead architecture design for data platforms supporting payment rails, API analytics, fraud and AML detection, and regulatory reporting.\n- Drive the transition to modern data architectures such as data mesh, data lakehouse, and event-driven patterns aligning to cloud and hybrid infrastructure strategies.\n\n#### Data Governance & Standards\n- Establish enterprise-wide data governance frameworks, data quality standards, and master data management (MDM) policies across six markets.\n- Define data classification, lineage, and cataloguing standards, ensuring traceability from source systems through to consumption layers.\n- Partner with Compliance, Legal, and Market teams to ensure data architectures meet local regulatory obligations and cross-border data sovereignty requirements.\n\n#### Integration & Platform Architecture\n- Architect data integration patterns between M-PESA core systems, third-party platforms, and analytics/AI layers.\n- Collaborate with API gateway teams to define event-driven, API-first data exchange patterns.\n- Design and govern streaming and CDC pipelines using technologies such as Apache Kafka and Oracle GoldenGate.\n\n#### AI & Analytics Enablement\n- Design data architectures that underpin AI/ML use cases including transaction monitoring, watchlist screening, and predictive analytics.\n- Define feature store design, data pipeline standards, and model serving infrastructure patterns.\n- Partner with the AI/ML team to evaluate and onboard vector databases and LLM-ready data infrastructure.\n\n#### Leadership & Stakeholder Engagement\n- Serve as the senior data architecture voice in Architecture Review Boards and group-level governance bodies.\n- Mentor and coach mid-level data engineers and architects across markets.\n- Produce executive-ready architecture artefacts, including C4/Mermaid diagrams and ADRs for CTO/CIO audiences.\n- Lead vendor evaluations for data platform tools and cloud services.\n\n### Qualifications and Experience\n- Education: Bachelor's degree in Computer Science, Information Systems, Electrical/Computer Engineering, or a related field.\n- Experience: A minimum of 3 years in a senior or lead capacity within data architecture or data engineering.\n- Industry Background: Proven track record in financial services, fintech, or telecommunications.\n- Technical Skills: Deep expertise in conceptual, logical, and physical data modelling for OLTP and OLAP systems.\n- Tools & Platforms: Hands-on experience with cloud data platforms (AWS, GCP, or Azure), big data technologies (Spark, Databricks, BigQuery, Redshift), and streaming platforms (Apache Kafka).\n- Integration: Proficiency in ETL/ELT, Change Data Capture (CDC), and API-driven data exchange.\n- Governance: Strong understanding of data governance frameworks (e.g., DAMA-DMBOK) and tools like Apache Atlas or Collibra.\n\n### How to Apply\n\nInterested and qualified candidates should apply via the Safaricom Kenya career portal on Oracle Cloud.
.png){kind=logo}